Attacks validate DHS report, some say

Civil rights activists say a string of recent attacks blamed on right-wing extremists, including Wednesday’s shooting at the Holocaust Museum, show that conservative critics were too quick to fault the Department of Homeland Security over an April report warning about the potential for such violence.

The report was roundly criticized by Republicans for painting conservatives as a threat—particularly military veterans and those opposed to abortion or immigration – and DHS later withdrew the report.

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“I think this latest round of killing once again shows how ridiculous the criticism from the right of the Department of Homeland Security report was. That whole brouhaha was absurd,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Rush Limbaugh and John Boehner can go on until the end of time about how [the report] was an attack on conservatives, but in reality it was a perfectly sober assessment of what was going on out there.”

“We felt the DHS report was pretty right on,” said Deborah Lauter of the Anti-Defamation League. “Clearly the election of Obama, the current financial crisis, and the discussion of immigration reform –those things have certainly fueled the right wing extremist movement in this country….There are clear indications that the rhetoric is manifesting. We hope it’s not the tip of the iceberg.”

The 88-year-old man alleged to have killed a security guard at the Holocaust Museum Wednesday, James von Brunn, was a hardcore white supremacist and Holocaust denier who often railed against Jews and African-Americans.

In 1981, he took a shotgun to the Federal Reserve to make what he called a citizen’s arrest over high interest rates. On his website, Von Brunn complained bitterly about being railroaded by a judicial system that included a Jewish judge and African-Americans on the jury.

The sharpest criticism of the report, titled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” was focused on a part of the report asserting that “the return of military veterans…could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”

A spokesman for Boehner, Michael Steel, said assertions that Republicans went too far in castigating the report were inappropriate to discuss in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting.